The Reluctant Fundamentalist
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | The Reluctant Fundamentalist: A Novel |
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| Author: | Mohsin Hamid |
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| Publisher: | Hamish Hamilton Ltd |
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite “valuation” firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.
But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
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Reviews
Amazon.com
Mohsin Hamid’s first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.
Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, “…I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased…I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees…” When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.
Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents’ advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. “I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared…I was saddened to find it in such a state…This was where I came from…and it smacked of lowliness.” He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its “unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm.” While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.
Hamid’s prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: “I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth.” In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: “The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget.” Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that—and all that follows. —Valerie Ryan
Barnes and Noble
A psychological thriller that spans continents and cultures, The Reluctant Fundamentalist takes us from the privileged confines of Princeton University to the anxious streets of contemporary Pakistan; from the sun-baked Greek island of Santorini to a sanitarium in the Hudson Valley; from the galleries of downtown Manhattan to the highest echelons of American finance. It’s a journey we take in less than 200 pages, and without leaving, until the very end, a small table at a modest tearoom in Lahore, Pakistan—and yet it is a journey that may reveal more about the human realities of the post-9/11 world than a shelf of thick political treatises.
At the table sit two men: a young Pakistani named Changez and an unnamed American. Only Changez speaks, and his mesmerizing monologue relates his story, beginning with his happy days at Princeton and continuing through his initial success as a well-paid financial analyst. His budding romance with Erica, a beautiful fellow Princetonian, runs in counterpoint to the early promise of his career.
Then come the attacks of September 11. Over the next few months, slowly but inexorably, the innocence of Changez’s ambition is shadowed by his experience of the unexpected political present—and by his altered understanding of his Pakistani past. As his career crumbles and Erica is consumed by her own demons, Changez’s sense of his identity fractures under the strain of conflicting impulses of pride, passion, and loyalty. He returns to his homeland, and the complexity of his new life there is reflected in the alternating currents of his voice ingratiating, insinuating, articulate, respectful, blunt, affecting, and, last but not least, sinister—as he leads his companion toward an uncertain yet ominous conclusion.
An extraordinary work of empathy and imagination, Mohsin Hamid’s novel vividly dramatizes the turmoil and terror of today’s world in a single, unforgettable voice.
